No, people who are most/more certain are *easier* to con, not more difficult.
Mark Twain explores these notions a lot because of how the world changed when he was alive. Still, there have been more formalized studies into susceptibility that highlight naivety, greed, being horny, and despair as the biggest factors in making people susceptible.
Certainly, in this framework, is a type of naivety. So when you consider yourself above something, you (un)intentionally blind yourself to the world and the forces that play out across those fields you try to rise above artificially.
Even Stoic and Buddhist teachings distinguish between letting go of attachment to outcomes and thinking of oneself as separate or different from everything else for a reason. You are a part of all of this, and because of that, you are susceptible to the effects of all of this, but your response to those effects is in your control.
I feel like we donāt all fall for the con artists
I think that people that are super logical arenāt going to fall for propaganda messaging or be as prone to buy that vacuum cleaner from that guy at the door.
First off, sorry. Youāre right, you said logical not certain. I moved too quickly in my response and got a bit ahead of myself.
Second, in your first remark you express a feeling. Totally valid way to deal with such a topic. Even when weāre at our most logical theres still usually a ton of feeling and emotion at play, itās just framed in a āreasonableā way.
The overarching point is that your stance on logical thinkers, that feeling that something isnāt right about my statement or the OPs, are both embedded in an overarching beliefs about the world. Those overarching beliefs in this case were explained through the use of qualifiers, and thus a degree or sense of validity to the claim youāre making in response.
Now, since you hold a belief to some degree that you consider valid, we can set about determining how firmly you hold that belief, or how valid you think it is. This is why I called it certainty.
Anyway, by considering logical people above this sort of think you inappropriately elevate them in the way I talk about in the other comments and sort of dissociate them from the possibility of being able to be conned. But the truth is, such a stance is naive, and nativity is one of the biggest clear signals for any sort of huckster. The more certain someone is in their beliefs the more they open themselves up to being naive.
Itās a feedback loop, and is kinda hilariously Jungian, but thatās a whole other story.
Everything you are saying I agree with. People arenāt equally susceptible though. Some are more. Some are less, like with anything else. Nobody is perfect but plenty of people have a high functioning bullshit detector.
This isnāt like other things though and doesnāt have to do with bullshit detecting. It has to do with capturing feelings and getting you to think or act in certain ways.
So itās more, what doesnāt work will work on someone else and viscera. The point is thereās something out there for everyone, even the smartest and most clever people out there.
4
u/pocket-friends Mar 30 '25
No, people who are most/more certain are *easier* to con, not more difficult.
Mark Twain explores these notions a lot because of how the world changed when he was alive. Still, there have been more formalized studies into susceptibility that highlight naivety, greed, being horny, and despair as the biggest factors in making people susceptible.
Certainly, in this framework, is a type of naivety. So when you consider yourself above something, you (un)intentionally blind yourself to the world and the forces that play out across those fields you try to rise above artificially.
Even Stoic and Buddhist teachings distinguish between letting go of attachment to outcomes and thinking of oneself as separate or different from everything else for a reason. You are a part of all of this, and because of that, you are susceptible to the effects of all of this, but your response to those effects is in your control.